Far out cosmology: earliest water appeared (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, March 07, 2025, 18:00 (7 days ago) @ David Turell

Prior to planet formation:

https://www.astronomy.com/science/the-first-stars-may-have-flooded-the-early-universe-w...

"New research, published today in Nature Astronomy, found that water may have formed in the first 200 million years of the universe’s lifetime. The life-giving molecule may have been created so quickly by the deaths of the universe’s first stars. The study also found that rocky planets could be built in the water-rich environment left behind, all before the first galaxies even existed.

"Principal investigator Daniel Whalen of Portsmouth University in the United Kingdom and his colleagues found that a rare type of supernova created only by the earliest stars formed enough water to drench the surrounding regions where the next generations of stars and their planets would be born.

"The very first stars formed from the hydrogen and helium that filled the universe after the Big Bang. These suns weren’t in galaxies — those didn’t exist yet — but instead at the intersections where cobweblike filaments of dark matter, strung between empty voids, met. Gravity drew gas to these intersections and when the density was high enough, the first stars were born.

"These stars were huge, as much as 300 times as massive as our Sun. Their temperatures were high and they burned through their fuel quickly. And they died in supernovae that spewed new elements across the galaxy.

"Whalen and his colleagues simulated two types of supernovae thought to be prevalent among the first generation of stars by following the lives of stars with 13 and 200 solar masses. “We watched primordial stars form … and then they blew up,” Whalen says.

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"When the first stars exploded, they were surrounded by leftover hydrogen gas from the star. Whalen’s simulations showed that the leftover material included small clumps bound together by gravity. As hot ejecta from the supernova raced outward, the metals within it — including oxygen — mixed with the hydrogen, accelerating their gravitational collapse. The added metals also helped the clumps to cool, allowing the oxygen to combine with hydrogen to form water."

Comment: life requires water. That it appeared so early fits the theory of design.